Forty-Eight Hours Before She Boards That Plane

“You were in my reporting chain for three months,” I said. “And before that we were on the same project for six. And the whole time I told myself that what I felt was — manageable. That I was managing it.” I paused. “I was wrong about that.”
“Which part?”
“All of it. The managing. The manageability.”
Something shifted in her face. Not dramatic — Ronja was never dramatic. Just a small softening around the eyes, a loosening of the careful composure she’d been wearing since the lobby.
“You have forty-eight hours,” she said.
“I know.”
“And we’re still colleagues. Technically. Until I board that plane.”
“I know that too.” I turned to face her fully. The cold air was sharp against my face and her eyes were very blue in the grey light. “I also know that I’ve spent six months being very responsible and very careful and it got us here. You leaving. Me standing in a lodge in Queenstown figuring out that what I was afraid of wasn’t the professional risk.”
She waited.
“I was afraid you’d say no,” I said. “And that would have been — worse. Than not knowing. So I protected myself by never asking.”
The admission sat in the cold air between us, plain and unglamorous and entirely true. That was the thing I hadn’t been willing to look at directly. Not the policy, not the reporting structure, not the professional complexity — all of that had been real, but it had also been convenient. A set of reasonable-sounding reasons to stay safe.
I had been afraid. That was the whole of it.
She looked at me for a long moment. The rain had stopped completely now, and somewhere above the cloud, the mountains were still there, enormous and indifferent and permanent.
“For what it’s worth,” she said quietly, “the answer would have been yes.”
I felt something loosen in my chest — something I hadn’t known was wound that tight.
“And now?”
She looked out at the invisible lake for a moment. Then she looked back at me, and the careful composure was completely gone, and she was just Ronja — warm and wry and real in a way that conference rooms had never quite allowed for.
“Now I have forty-eight hours,” she said, “and a corner room with a view of clouds. And you’re still standing in the doorway.”
She wasn’t talking about the terrace.
I stepped toward her. Not dramatically. Not the way it happens in films, with the swelling music and the perfect lighting. Just a step, and then she tilted her face up slightly, and the space between us closed in the quiet, unhurried way that things close when they’ve been held apart too long.
I didn’t think about Singapore. I didn’t think about the paperwork already signed, the flight already booked, the forty-eight hours already counting down. Those things were real, and we would have to live inside them — but not yet.
The mist lay soft over the mountains. The lodge fire crackled somewhere behind us. And for the first time in six months, I stopped managing.

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About the Author

Clara Vance — a former corporate strategist, expert in the tension that builds between two desks. Her hobby? Morning coffee chats in the office where she collects ideas for her stories.

— Clara Vance

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Categories: Forbidden, Romances

Tags: 10min stories, Clara Vance, emotional fiction, forbidden romance, New Zealand, Queenstown, second chance, short story, slow burn, workplace romance

September 1, 2026

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